Caregiver Pie: Maintaining Financial, Emotional, Mental, and Physical Wellbeing | 013

Hello. Welcome to the Sharegiving Secrets. I want to talk to you today about a recipe for caregiver pie. It's something we think about a little bit during the holidays, but maybe not enough. This is a pie that was very special pie. It serves four and those four slices come from your personal resources. Here are the ingredients, financial, emotional, mental, physical, well being. The recipe is to keep off or slices balanced and refilled as much of the time as you can, just like a little kid, you should nibble a bite a little bit at each one, so there's always something left for another time. If you're subtracting all the time, if you gobble all of one up, it's difficult to add it back. These four aspects of well being need to work together undivided. It's the fusion of those ingredients that keeps us well. Sometimes we draw too heavily on one slice, say, finances, if we have to make repairs or changes to our homes to accommodate a loved one, if we cannot refill that slice, though that ingredient, we might be jeopardizing our own futures. How will you plan for this ingredient of caregiving? So often I hear from one half of a married couple that their spouse's illness has consumed all of their two retirement funds. The time to prevent that from happening is at the beginning when you should set some realistic goals. I know, I know when you love someone, you feel you would do anything for them, and that you cannot plan for everything, but not thinking about it is just avoiding reality. It's expensive to be ill or disabled in our society, and if that slice, that slice of finances, is all gone, you will have difficulty replacing it all at once. Just because there's a care plan in place, it doesn't mean that you don't need a budget. The second slice is emotional, and we need to replenish this slice as well. Caring for a loved one who isn't well can drain us, dealing with outsiders and insiders who are well, sometimes unhelpful, or worse, harmful, that can diminish our compassion and create unnecessary reasons to be angry and overwhelmed if you've just been through an emotionally draining experience. It's tough to replenish your supply. I remember when my mother passed away on a Thanksgiving Day, and because my dad needed so much care and grief support, I didn't have a chance to feel my feelings until much later, and then it was very hard to set mine aside to help dad when he died of a broken heart two months later, the rush of unfelt emotions was overwhelming for me. Postponing or not having your feelings when they come sometimes creates a spillover effect of too much pie drowning out the other two remaining flavors, mental and physical, those ingredients that we really need to stay on top of caregiving. As far as the mental slice goes, caregivers need to remain creative and organized to survive the experience. If you're overwhelmed by financial worries or unacknowledged emotions, your mental energy can shrink when you need your creativity and organization the most. The mental drain of being another person's eyes and ears can diminish your own capability. When I was caregiving, I often thought, I wish I had an extra brain to help me cope. Can you identify with that? Do caregivers ever get tired? We like to imagine caregivers as selfless, sleepless servants, but the answer is, oh yes. Do we get tired sometimes, I don't know about you, but I cannot think well, when my physical energy is running out. I also have to admit that exercise and other healthy habits are often the first things I let go of when I'm on caregiving overload. It's so important to keep them on the radar in order to sustain and replenish the other areas. The caregiver pie is a source of nourishment that we all have to replenish constantly. But do we have to do it alone? No, and I help coach caregivers to find the ingredients to refill their pie plates. Here's the best part, it's not just for Thanksgiving. You can enjoy them anytime. Don't let yourself go hungry. Connect with me to find out how to bake your own caregiver pie and savor its balanced goodness. You know, isolation is often a concern for family caregivers during the holidays, if the person they are caring for cannot entertain visitors or travel, each one of us can help to manage down that feeling in ways that do not cost a fortune in time or money. I know everyone gets busy at this time of the year, often overextending themselves financially and otherwise. So fellow share givers, here is a tip everyone can use, and it doesn't cost much in terms of time or money, and often you can do it from the comfort of your own chair. It's story sharing. At this time of year, people often reflect on their lives, and they may recall stories they've loved and not heard for a while, or stories they never told anyone, but possibly should have. The problem for some people is that these potential storytellers have no listeners. As a share giver, you might be one or the other of those people, the ones who want to listen or the ones who want to tell, or both. Can you plan a moment to share a story with a caregiver and give him or her a chance to tell their own story by wrapping and unwrapping your words out loud together, you can find the peace and connection that come from telling it like it was. Everyone wants to be heard, and we are all wired to crave stories. Come to think of it, stories are how we replenish the cupboards that contain the ingredients for the caregiver pie. Have you run out of something lately? Perhaps your story contains all the ingredients you need to revitalize the balance or the slice of pie that you're missing, perhaps another person's story can light up a bulb of an idea for you, we aren't lonely when we connect with stories. I would love to hear yours. So please connect to restock your ingredients for well being, financial, emotional, mental and physical. You could put them in the comments below, because we can share the bounty by helping each other. Until next time, please don't keep your share giving impulse a secret. I'd love to see your strategy in those comments. That's the way we multiply.